National News

Despite outrageous school spending, students actually dumber than in 1972

The amount of money that the American taxpayers have been forced to spend on public schools has more than doubled in the last few years — even though such spending has had no demonstrable impact on students’ intelligence levels, a bombshell new study found.

On average, student academic performance actually declined slightly over the last 40 years — an astonishing fact, given the huge amount of money spent on public education and the general boost that technological improvements have provided to virtually every other sector of U.S. life.

The sobering truth comes courtesy of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. Andrew Coulson, director of the center, examined trends in education spending and standardized test scores between 1972 and 2012. In many states, inflation-adjusted education spending rose by 50 percent, 100 percent and even 200 percent. Test scores, however, were hardly affected — and even fell in many states.